Out-siders/, a handmade chapbook, is the latest work to be published by Dunlin Press. The limited edition concertina-format pamphlet, printed on textured gesso and archival papers, is a continued exploration of the liminal spaces, waste ground, brownfield and edgeland flora that we surveyed in last year’s book, The Orphaned Spaces.

The A7 concertina format is, in effect, reversible, and its full title is Out-siders/ Hybrid / Province.

With words and images from Ella Johnston and MW Bewick, Out-siders features remnant text, as well as landscape and ikebana-inspired photography, from the places and flora that we encountered through our continued research into orphaned spaces. Outsiders is in some ways a seasonal update, or perhaps an overspill or a further iteration of an original impulse.

Let’s take a brief step back. That initial impulse for The Orphaned Spaces was to create a small, handmade and deconstructed work of words and images. As the ‘waste ground’ project grew, however, so did the size of that book. The Orphaned Spaces was published in summer 2018 as a paperback and as a limited edition, made-to-order box set. We still, however, had words and images left over, and were continuing to collect more. Out-siders/ is a small, creative, and experimental outlet for those ruderal gatherings.

This summer, while we work through our next large project, Port, for an autumn publication, it has been wonderful to be able to return to the craft of making pamphlets by hand.

As Out-siders/ is intended as an interstitial project, a limited number of only 20 chapbooks are available.

Each has been been printed and made by hand here at the Dunlin Press studio.

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Thank you to everyone who has sent in submissions for our upcoming book, Port. We’re in the thick of reading through them all and can honestly say that the response has been fantastic. We will be able to let you know whether we’ve accepted your writing very soon.

The selection process for a book like Port can be a tricky, but always fascinating, process. It’s here that the book becomes the book – it’s where it takes shape, where its inner logic and poetry are revealed.

We know from our first book Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia, that creating such an anthology isn’t only about choosing the best writing, or about choosing a selection of writing where each piece complements and adds to the others. It’s both of those things, of course, but it’s also about achieving geographical range.

Here we are in the silver mud of estuarine East Anglia, but how many pieces did we receive from Scotland or Wales? Are the southwest and northeast represented? Did anyone write about London and the Thames? Who brought us postcards from further afield?

The process of turning a book into a ‘Dunlin Press book’ also means we work hard to fill any potential gaps, wearing our editorial and journalistic hats and hauling in any other work we think might add to the whole.

And then we turn to the design. We never hand over our manuscripts in Word to a typesetter who prepares it for print. Each Dunlin Press book is carefully crafted in our own little studio, with typeface, artwork and illustration, layout and format created uniquely for each title.

Hopefully all this is evident in the finished publication.

Which is a way of saying that making a Dunlin Press book takes time, so thanks for bearing with us. Though we say it ourselves, Port is going to be brilliant.

Ella and Martin

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Dunlin Press has created an exhibition of artworks that are currently on view at the train station in Wivenhoe, Essex. The project is part of the town’s ongoing Off the Rail project, which sees a continuing series of artworks being displayed at the station. Railways have often featured in Dunlin Press’s books and, of course, Wivenhoe is our home town, too – so it’s a fitting place to be.

The exhibition is untitled and is part of an ongoing investigation into liminal spaces, edgelands, brownfield, and sites of altered use, which informed our recent book The Orphaned Spaces, and other work.

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Take a closer look at our Tales from the East box set, which celebrates writing from East Anglia.

Since the launch of our first book, Est, Collected Reports from East Anglia, in 2015, Dunlin Press has been a champion of writing from East Anglia. Our commitment to publishing fresh and original writing from the region has continued over the years with the publication of two books by East Anglian-based poets, MW Bewick in 2017 and Alex Toms in October this year.

We’ve created a special edition curated box set containing all three books. We’ve also added some extra surprises that will only be revealed when you buy the box set.

Est is a unique collection of prose, poetry and reportage that spans the Wash to the Thames and the Fens to the German Sea. The texts merge psychogeography, social history, personal memoir and travel writing with discourses on local fable, art, archaeology and conservation. The collection explores the salt marshes and creeks, the sand and shingle beaches, the remains of Roman and Anglo-Saxon dwellings, the giant skies, interior geographies and, perhaps most of all, human histories, to paint an enigmatic picture of East Anglia today – while referencing more than 260 places in the region.

The book has received critical acclaim. Here’s just some of the kind words people have said about the publication…

‘Strange, reflective, memorable and odd as the region itself’
Libby Purves, Country Life

‘Books like Est must be able to be written again by the next generation’Caught By The River

‘Uniformly excellent… well-edited, well designed, and unbreakable’
Ken Worpole, author of The New English Landscape

Scarecrow is the debut poetry collection of poet and Dunlin Press co-founder MW Bewick. The poems transfigure contemporary landscapes of the city and the countryside in an unsettling flux of fractured narrative time and atomised human agency. Here, a panorama of gleaming towers and blood-red cranes mirrors another of overgrown flora and shorelines collapsing into the sea.

At the book’s heart is the figure of the scarecrow – a monad, feet cemented, ragged legs flailing, unable – or unwilling – to act as the world rushes by. At turns wistful, angry, and touched with remorse, this inventive and thought-provoking volume brings together registers of folk, baroque and the surreal to confront a 21st-century sense of existential crisis.

In her debut collection of poetry, Alex Toms introduces us to a troupe of curious characters to explore themes of love, womanhood and sex. At the centre of this collection is the eel catcher, a shadowy figure who lives on the fringes of everyday experience. The eel catcher weaves willow traps, and tales of folklore and magic, evoking an East Anglia inhabited by poachers, witches and ghosts.

In her poems, Toms skilfully summons the uncanny, and out of it draws a slithering sense with which we are all familiar. Here are all the snares of life, and also perhaps, a spell that could set us free.

As this book is so new, it’s currently out for reviews. However the Alex’s collection has already impressed fellow writers, with poet Martin Newell commenting, “These poems are not just clever, they have depth and originality. I hope it’s a big success”.

Alex Toms is a repeat winner in national poetry competitions and in 2015 was Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year. She is widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies.

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Lessons for an Apprentice Eel Catcher, Alex Toms. Published by Dunlin Press

Dunlin Press are delighted to launch Alex Toms’ debut poetry collection, Lessons for an Apprentice Eel Catcher, at The Wivenhoe Bookshop on Thursday 11th October 2018.
In this stunning, otherworldly collection of poetry, Alex Toms introduces us to a troupe of curious characters to explore themes of love, womanhood and sex. At the centre of this collection is the eel catcher, a shadowy figure who lives on the fringes of everyday experience. The eel catcher weaves willow traps, and tales of folklore and magic, evoking an East Anglia inhabited by poachers, witches and ghosts.

In her poems, Toms skilfully summons the uncanny, and out of it draws a slithering sense with which we are all familiar. Here are all the snares of life, and also perhaps, a spell that could set us free.

Lessons for an Apprentice Eel Catcher, Alex Toms. Published by Dunlin Press

The poems are accompanied by specially commissioned individual paper-cut illustrations and bespoke photography.

Lessons for an Apprentice Eel Catcher, Alex Toms. Published by Dunlin Press

Alex Toms is a repeat winner in national poetry competitions and in 2015 was Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year. She is widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies. Find out more about the launch here.

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Our latest book, The Orphaned Spaces, collates a number of different styles of photography and illustration, in different sections detailing the flora and fauna discovered on real areas of edgeland, brownfield sites and waste ground. Still Lives is one such section.

Botanical still life, The Orphaned Spaces.

Yarrow, ragwort, plantain, mallow… these are the plants we often overlook, but do much to define the ecology of our wilder spaces. In The Orphaned Spaces, we greet them with photography, fine art, illustration and prose.

Botanical still life, The Orphaned Spaces.

Taking the form of an A5, 148-page book and/or made-to-order box set, The Orphaned Spaces is an illustrated exploration of overlooked areas of natural beauty – edgelands, ex-industrial, derelict and brownfield sites, and the sometimes rare flora and fauna that is found there.

More than a nature book, it is a rumination on life, loss and time, through the prism of liminal spaces captured in moments between dilapidation and regeneration.

Originally the botanical still life photography was intended for our own personal research purposes. As part of our artistic process, we often make visual records when putting together our publications. We find visual research very effective in distilling a mood, capturing sometimes overlooked idiosyncrasies of a place or object; it’s generally a good resource to draw from when writing or illustrating.

As we’ve mentioned previously, The Orphaned Spaces started off small and has grown into a larger continuing project, as well as the book and limited edition box set.

Botanical still life, The Orphaned Spaces.

The botanical photographs were created with plants and flowers gathered in the spring and summer from various edgelands and brownfield sites we visited over the course of our research. Inspired by Japanese ikebana, the plants were arranged starkly (sometimes with the help of wire and tape) on a plain, neutral background, to look like they are growing in isolation, and shot quickly.

Botanical still life, The Orphaned Spaces.

The book and box set feature an edited selection of these photographs, however we are also amassing a growing library of images, now with various pioneer plants and botanicals gathered in autumn and winter. Perhaps these will lend themselves to an exhibition at some point in the future.

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The Orphaned Spaces box set is one of those wonderful examples of how a very basic idea can grow into a full-blown all-consuming project.

Dated glass bottle reliquary

Our original idea for The Orphaned Spaces was to have a plain paper bag containing fragments of writing, the odd drawing and some landscape photography, all loosely themed around ‘waste ground’. About a month in to the project, however, it had already started to take on a life of its own. In the end, we spent a year gathering pictures and writing for it – and it still continues.

Postcards, fine art prints, seeds and reliquary

We’ve often described our Dunlin Press publications as ‘time capsules’, embodying the mood and spirit of a place or region at a particular period of human history – like pressing a pause button or taking a picture. The Orphaned Spaces box set is a physical manifestation of this concept.

The Orphaned Spaces: Hand-stitched journal

This highly limited edition, made-to-order box set, deconstructs the book The Orphaned Spaces, breaking it down into hand-stitched booklets, postcards, archival prints and a reliquary.

The Orphaned Spaces is an illustrated exploration of overlooked areas of natural beauty – edgelands, ex-industrial, derelict and brownfield sites, and the sometimes rare flora and fauna that is found there. More than a nature book, it is a rumination on life, loss and time, through the prism of liminal spaces captured in moments between dilapidation and regeneration.

Hand-stitched black and white botanical and insect studies booklet

The Orphaned Spaces book and box-set are released on 27 August 2018 but you can pre-order it now to get it on the day. If you’re a bookshop that wants to stock it, or any of our other titles, please get in touch with us email us at info (at) dunlinpress (dot) com.